Ubuntu Linux Novice

Over the last year I have been fighting in my lab with Windows XP until I finally installed a copy of Ubuntu Linux release 6.10 code-named Edgy Eft. My experience so far has been quite positive even though getting started with Ubuntu required some efforts. The wikis of the Ubuntu web site have been very helpful.

My experience with Ubuntu so far:

Downloading and burning a cd with the OS is easy to do as it is well explained in the Ubuntu web site

Kind of funny having to run the suggested error check prior to intallation

The partition of the hard drive while installing the OS requires some research! number of partitions, size, filesystem …

The installation of the OS is quite fast, it only takes 15-20 minutes

For an OS that’s free, the graphic user interface is quite impressive

A number of useful applications is installed together with the OS

Installing additional applications isn’t as intuitive as it can be with mac or windows can be done in different ways. Some apps can be installed easily through the Add/Remove Applications. Other apps can be installed through the repositories in Synaptic or through command line in Terminal.

I was going to comment on the exact same thing. ‘Intuitive’ does not mean “same as Windows & Mac”. For someone who just wants some new functionality, selecting “Add/Remove” from the main menu is arguably much more intuitive than downloading an installer from a web site or loading a CD you bought and going through an install wizard.

I did notice the Add/Remove feature from the main menu and I admit that´s much more intuitive than any other thing (from there I easily installed Azureus for instance). But how about other common apps like Skype? I couldn´t succeed from Add/Remove, it wasn´t that simple to figure out how to install such app (I will explain it in my next post!).